I put the power to another challenge for yesterday's show (2/23/08).
CCA boardmambo David MacKenzie sent the Jim Kweskin to Peggy Lee challenge to me back in January. At the end of the month he smacked down another. (No money on the table . . . but that's not why we're here.)
Dennis Quaid to Janis Joplin. And, Dave had a specific path between the two in mind when he sent this to me. I struggled with it for a while and put it aside. Somehow it seemed to loom over my head for more than the three weeks it took me to put it together.
Quaid has plenty of footprint as an actor - it's harder to come up with concrete evidence of his well known sideline. Nothing on ITunes - the All Music Guide can't find him. Google serves up a reference to his band, The Sharks, but their website seems to require a plug-in that I haven't the patience to track down.
Dave stopped by the studio a week ago and delivered another hint to me. He said that the connection did start with a film.
I thought the key would be in the movie "Great Balls of Fire", where DQ played Jerry Lee Lewis. There is at least one YouTube-posted video of Quaid and Lewis amidst balls of fire, pounding out the title tune on pianos. Harder to find actual footage of Quaid singing a song that I could manage to include on the radio show. There was a clip of him singing a song called "If You Don't Know Me by Now" (no, not that one . . . )
Through the magic of computers and the internets, I used that YouTube clip over the air.
Back to the connection - it turns out that Solomon Burke played a part in the movie "The Big Easy".
I lit out after Solomon Burke and tracked him to a 2006 album called "Nashville", which featured duets with a number of females of the country-music persuasion. One of them was Emmylou Harris. From there I got to "The Last Waltz", the Martin Scorcese film of The Band's farewell concert. She appeared in the film, along with Paul Butterfield. Butterfield's album "East-West" was produced by Paul Rothchild. He also produced albums for Bonnie Raitt, Love, The Doors, Tim Buckley and . . . Janis Joplin. He did the production for her last album, "Pearl".
Noto bene: I am endeavoring to abide by Joe's challenge to lay off the 'songwriter' connection. My guarantee: All of the persons used in the above linking were - at one time or another - in the same place at the same time. And no animals were injured in the making of this link.
Thank you for letting me tell you that.
The Dennis Quaid to Janis Joplin challenge was featured on the February 23 show, which had a secondary theme of "Food".
3 comments:
Your ability to research and deliver these connections is astounding. Nuff said.
January 27, 2008
Dennis Quaid to Janis Joplin
I decided to start with Dennis Quaid because he starred and sang in “The Big Easy” (1987), one of my favorite movies. I thought it would be interesting to start with someone who is mainly thought of as an actor (the reverse of going from Tiny Tim to Clint Eastwood). The writers of one of the Big Easy songs was listed as “R. Hawkins,” and I wondered if that was Ronnie Hawkins (see below) and, if so, thought that would be a good jumping off point. It wasn’t Ronnie Hawkins, but I was intrigued by finding a possible Quaid/Joplin link, so I stuck with it.
Here is the path I found (not necessarily found in this order, but found none-the-less!):
1. One of the other actors in “The Big Easy” was John Goodman . Goodman jumped out at me because I knew he had done some music, including “Blues Brothers 2000” and a thing I saw him do (a TV recording of something done at a club in LA, years ago) with Kelsey Grammer (something quasi-comic-operatic, but I can’t remember specifically what it was).
2. John Goodman was also in “True Stories” (Talking Heads, 1986).
3. One of the actors in “True Stories” was Roebuck “Pops” Staples (Staple Singers; father of Mavis Staples).
4. Staples was one of the performers in “The Last Waltz,” the final concert of The Band (1978).
5. Ronnie Hawkins was one of the performers in “The Last Waltz.” Hawkins’ band was The Hawks, which had many members over time - - including most members of The Band - - and also including guitarist John Till (on Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, and on Ronnie Hawkins, both recorded in 1966).
6. John Till was also with Janis Joplin’s Full Tilt Boogie Band, on Pearl (1971).
It’s interesting that we ended up at the same points - - “The Last Waltz and the Full Tilty Boogie Band - - but through a different path and through different people.
I agree - interesting that we were parallel on some of those connections and hit the same points on some. Thanks for playing.
If my memory serves me, the next challenge is Nina Simone to Mick Jagger - stay tuned.
MF - you are too kind. Just some old gumshoe, bro.
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